Suns Squared: Lineup Spotlight

With Tyler Ulis playing more and more, I thought it was time to take a look at one lineup featuring him.

Tyler Ulis has started to play more regularly and with that in mind, I’m going to take a look at a lineup featuring Ulis, then breakdown Ulis himself as well.

The lineup being featured is the five-man crew of Bledsoe, Booker, Ulis, Warren, and Williams. At first glance, the lineup is exceptionally small with Williams being the ‘center’ at 6’7, also extremely young as Bledsoe is the most experienced at 27, then both Booker and Williams are in their 2nd season, Ulis is a rookie, and Warren is playing his 3rd year. Below is some of the basic advanced stats for the lineup.

Before diving deeper into the numbers with this lineup, I have to note the lineup itself has only appeared in two games for a total of four minutes so far. These numbers above are likely to change rather extremely as the lineup plays more. With that said, it is still impressive that the lineup is scoring at such a high rate. The offensive rebound rate is actually above the Suns’ team number (26%) which is surprising given the small size of the lineup. True shooting number is slightly below the overall team number at 54%.

But the two numbers I want to focus on most is Pace and Opponent Turnover Perfentage. The pace this lineup plays at is breakneck. 111 is almost 9 more possessions per 48 minutes than the Suns team regularly plays (102.34) which is already 3rd fastest in the league. Opponent TO% is 18% which is slightly above the Suns’ team number of 14.8%. I would expect both those numbers to remain somewhat consistent given the makeup of this lineup which instinctively has a want to push the pace coupled with the ability to get into opposing guards and turn them over is a strength of this lineup. However, they will likely get killed on the glass. Overall, I like the use of this lineup in short spurts and am excited to hopefully see more of it down the stretch.

I want to finish this post with a quick look at Ulis. Ulis has been playing well of late, including hitting the game winning three-pointer against the Celtics the other night and it shows in his numbers. I hope to see more of Ulis down the stretch and well into the future. Ulis was one of the players I thought was underrated coming into last years draft and believe the Suns killed it when they drafted him in the second round. When I think about Ulis, I remember the game Auburn played against Kentucky last year, when no one on Kentucky, Ulis included, could make a shot leading to an Auburn victory. Despite that, Ulis’ performance was the big takeaway for me. He played all 40 minutes recording 17 points, 10 rebounds, and 8 assists while making big play after big play to keep Kentucky in the game. I distinctly remember Ulis consistently going hard into the paint, absorbing contact and finishing to get the and-1. His toughness is something I hope to see take him a long way in the NBA.